All Is Fair
by Shadow Of Grace
Summary: She was kind and caring, yet had an inner strength that could move mountains. He was a liar and a murderer with a soul as black as his eyes. Neither could see the thin red string of fate that bound them together, nor could they prepare for the love they would feel in suck a broken, broken world. ItaSaku AU
1. Prologue

The large expanse of desert, full of war only moments ago, was as still as death itself. What would have been silence filling the dusty air was broken by the pained and muffled groans of the dying. Blood soaked into the sand, staining it a sickly red-brown. Bodies were littered haphazardly about, the few that were still breathing writhed in agony while the corpses stared at the sky with wide, glassy eyes.

Such was the hell surrounding the one silently dying man amongst the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of broken soldiers found himself in. He wasn't a soldier - or so he told himself – and he fought for no one. Not the country that abandoned him. Not the family he once had. Not for any woman a lesser man may have gazed at with childish dreams of love. Not even for the children slain long before their time.

No, he was not a soldier, and he fought for no one; not even himself.

Blood blossomed from his chest, running in thick rivulets down his arms and dripping with a steady _plop-plop-plop _to the ground. Almost absently he wondered if anyone would miss him. Would his body even be buried? No, traitors did not receive honor after death; he would most likely be picked apart by the birds until nothing was left but his bones, half buried in the sand. Only a handful of people would even notice his absence, and they certainly wouldn't grieve, let alone try to find his corpse. When one murders for a living, death was merely accepted, never mourned. Kami only knew how many people he'd slain in his twenty four years of life. The blood of men, women, and children stained his hands, all killed without hesitation or remorse. A death with such little pain was certainly more than he felt he deserved.

Somewhere in the distance chopper blades sliced at the air, sending a billowing plume of sand into the sky as the rails hit the ground. A medic immediately leapt from the machine, bag gripped tightly in her hand as she dashed across the scorched terrain, heedless of the shouts and warnings from her comrades.

She felt tears being to prick at her eyes with ever unmoving body she saw, men and women that she could have saved. . . people that never had to die. The young woman hated very few things, and none more so than death. For so many years she had studied and trained her way to becoming a medic so that she could finally help fight back the looming shadow of the Grim Reaper. She was new to the war - on her very first mission, in fact – and the sight of the mangled bodies and discarded weapons amongst the twisted shards of metal and pools of brownish blood made her feel sick. Thiswas what she wanted to prevent. Those were the charred and bloodied remains of the people she had hoped to save. And that. . . was that a flicker of movement?

Her head snapped toward the body, partially hidden beneath the wreckage of an overturned jeep, as it took another shallow breath. She was all too aware of the damage to his torso, the amount of blood pooling around him, and the feebleness with which his chest rose with every shaky breath. But he was still breathing.

"You're not gonna die, dammit!" she hissed, shoving the heavy bulk of the jeep away as much as she could as she knelt beside the man.

For the briefest moment, the woman could have sworn she saw the man's lips twitch up into the smallest of smiles, but it was gone too fast to be sure. Shaking her head slightly, she tore away the remains of his shirt to assess the full extent of the damage. Blood bubbled up from the massive wound that spanned nearly from his hip bones to his collarbone, yet it was much shallower than she had any right to hope. Shards of shrapnel were buried in his left shoulder and a few of the metal bits had grazed his left lung, yet his hearth and right lung looked unscathed. But then. . . why was he bleeding so much?

"Haruno! Get him on the damn stretcher so we can get out of here!" a voice shouted as two men drew closer, each toting a medic bag of their own.

"He shouldn't be bleeding like this!" the woman shouted back, eyes never leaving the man before her had he began to convulse.

"We don't have time for this! More troops are headed this way, if we don't haul ass and get the hell out of here we're going to be stuck right in the middle of the gunfire!"

"You're not dying today." the woman hissed as she pulled a wad of bandages from her bag "You're not fucking dying today!"

The man was suddenly very aware of the form kneeling beside him. His first instinct was to attack, but his body refused to comply. A voice was shouting something at him, but the words were too muddled to understand, especially with the agony stabbing at his skull. Each breath seemed to burn at his throat and sent blood into his mouth, yet he didn't stop; he _couldn't _stop. A survival instinct, perhaps? He almost scoffed aloud at the thought. Just when he had accepted death, welcomed it, even. . . then someone had to show up and ruin it all. A girl, or so he guessed by the garbled voice. A girl with ridiculously pink hair sticking to her face as she glared down at him with determined eyes.

He felt a rush of resentment toward the girl. What right did she have to drag him back into the world? He was fully content to die, right in the middle of that god-forsaken desert. There was no _life _for him to go back to, so why should he _live_? To be feared and hated? To kill more innocent people? There was no reason for him to take another breath, yet he did, and another after that. His heart – his twisted, blackened heart – kept on beating, confining him to the world he never wanted, to the life he so despised. And it was that pink haired girl that did it. Yes, he would certainly hate her with every fiber of his being, of that he was certain.

Oblivious to the man's thoughts, the woman couldn't hold back a smile as she leaned back slightly and allowed the others to heft him onto a stretcher. She had finally saved her first life. She didn't know his name, age, or rank, but it didn't really matter to her. Now he could go back home, greet his family and friends, maybe even a wife as well. Perhaps he had children, too? She had, with her own hands, pulled the man from the brink of death and snatched him away from the dark claws of the Grim Reaper. She had bested death, and that feeling alone made a joy like no other bubble within her.

A woman so full of love and compassion, so willing to help. A man who lived in the shadows, hiding away his feelings for fear of pain. She was kind and caring, yet had an inner strength that could move mountains. He was a liar and a murderer, with a soul as black as his eyes. Neither could see the thin red string of fate that bound them together.


	2. Author's Note

**Grace:**

**Hey everyone.**

**I'd like to start off with an apology for all of my readers. All of you really do mean a lot to me, every single hit on this story makes me smile. The faves and follows never fail to improve my mood, even when I'm having the shittiest of days, and if I could hug every one of you I would. You reviewers, though. . . you guys really are the ones that inspire me to get off my procrastinating and incredibly lazy ass to get some writing done, and every single one literally makes me dance around like a lunatic; my cousins must think I need to be locked up at this point.**

**Unfortunately, life is a bitch – as I'm sure you all know. After dealing with some rather severe bullying problems and more than one hospital visit, I've ended up moving. Now I'm in a different state entirely, and though things are quite a bit easier for me now, I'm still dealing with physical and mental after effects. Now, please note that I am ****NOT ****fishing for sympathy, I haven't a doubt in my mind that I can't even begin to fathom the troubles that other people have. At this point I simply feel obligated to my amazing readers to explain why the hell it's taking me so long to update.**

**Now that I'm finally getting settled properly and on the road to a decent recovery, I'd like to pick up my writing again. After reading through my assorted stories, I was left utterly disgusted by the all-round quality – or lack thereof – of nearly every chapter. Frankly, I'm rather surprised that no one has pointed out the shoddiness of my writing yet. **

**More to the point, I've decided to do a full re-write of every story. Needless to say, this is no small undertaking, especially with the nearly two dozen other fanfics that I haven't quite gotten around to posting. In order to make everything a bit easier for me, I've made an entirely new account. All re-written fics will be uploaded as I get to them, and I promise that each and every story I've published thus far WILL be gotten to eventually, though I can't say quite when. A link for my new account (Pen name Forsaken Paradise) can be found on my profile.**

**Again, I would like to thank each of my readers, favoriters, followers, and reviewers. All of you really have brought a bit of sunshine to my day – ironic given that it's storming at the moment – and I wish I could thank each of you individually, but unfortunately typing isn't very easy for me at the moment. Please do keep an eye out for the new version of this story, and I'll probably post a quick notice on here when I upload the fixed version. At the risk of being repetitive, thank you all for your support of my writing up to this point, and I hope to hear from you guys again. **

**Lots of love,**

**Grace.**


End file.
